Posted
by
timothy
on Friday April 23, 2010 @06:00PM
from the would-be-dead-a-thousand-times dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "NPR reports that German researchers have tested a new technology called eyeDriver that tracks a driver's eye movement and, in turn, steers the car in whatever direction they're looking at speeds up to 31 mph. 'The next step will be to get it to drive 60 miles per hour,' says Raul Rojas, an artificial intelligence researcher at Berlin's Free University. A Dodge Caravan fitted with eyeDriver has been tested on the tarmac at an abandoned airport at Tempelhof Airport. However, it remains unclear when — or if — the technology will be commercialized, as questions about safety and practicability abound: What about looking at a cute girl next to the road for a few seconds? Not to mention taking phone calls or typing a text while driving. But the researchers have an answer to distracted drivers: 'The Spirit of Berlin' is also an autonomous car equipped with GPS navigation, scores of cameras, lasers, and scanners that enable it to drive by itself. And should the technology-packed vehicle have a major bug, there's still an old fashioned way of stopping it. Two big external emergency buttons at the rear of the car allow people outside to shut down all systems."

Of course abnormal distractions would be bad. But just think of the normal ones like "road signs" or "checking blind spots" or "looking out for unexpected traffic." Yeah, this is neat, but with the inherent risks involved in driving as it is, probably a bad idea.

Distractions are one thing, and a good, focused driver MAY be able to avoid many of them. But good, focused drivers also need to look around the road to check for drivers who aren't that good, or for pedestrians who are jay-walking, or for children who run out on the street. Good drivers will (and should) check all around themselves for any potential dangers and not just stare straight at where they want to go.

Whoever thought of this idea was probably a poor driver who never looked around his car

It's not even that "abnormal distractions would be bad" -- it would be completely, absolutely crazy to drive like that.

Landing a plane, on the other hand -- that I could potentially agree on. Some studies show pilots staring at the far end of the runway say from 200ft down to ground contact, so that could potenitally work. It's sort of a reflex thing they do in visual conditions.

Driving on a long stretch of straight road sometimes looks like that too, when you analyze the eye movements.

So we want cars to steer towards what we are looking at? Seriously? You want to have all the cute women in the world run over?

While the comment WAS funny there is a problem with something like that already.

It's been known for decades that drunk drivers tend to fixate on flashing yellow lights and then steer toward them. This makes using flashing yellow lights as a warning counter-productive.

Oregon, for instance, long ago switched away from blinky-yellow lights to the rear on police cars to use as warning lights when they have people pulled over - with a significant reduction in car-hits-cop-at-traffic-stop incidents.

California, of course, has standardized on big yellow blinky-lights for cop car pullover warnings. (I recall a few years back when San Jose was lamenting how many of their new fleet of cruisers had been smashed by drunk drivers that year...)

One of the funniest things I ever saw was two very expensive convertibles do a head on crash into each other along Miami's South Beach as both drivers (male) did head swivels to check out the hot girl walking by in almost nothing.

Sure someone drives into a jogger at 60mph, but then a few people turn their heads at the gruesome sight.. they just cant look away.. Then the concerned people realize whats going to happen and cant look away.. before long you have smoking piles of cars in a mountain of carnage.

Except for the odd moment here and there, good fighter pilots are looking at/for things in lots of places other than where they want the plane to go. There would seem to be few real-world situations where driving requires such a single-minded focus, with no checking to the sides (or up and down in a plane). Baja racer, perhaps? And then there's always the question of throttle and braking...

That's debatable. Minivans today more closely resemble the Renault Espace than the VW Van. Although the Dodge Caravan launched a few months before the Espace, and definitely had more of the VW Bus's 'pedigree' evident, its subsequent revisions made it resemble the Espace more and more closely.

I don't think that invalides VW popularising the concept. For another example - Model T is a large part of kickstarting the whole car craze...yet you won't really find similar cars on the road these days. Or VW Beetle, which in a way picked up where Model T left; also not many cars very like it today (even New Beetle is only superficially similar)

Plus, there are compact MPV (Touran) cars which don't really descend from Espace. Well, to be fair they do from Renault Scenic;>

Here in the UK you don't pass a driving test without using your rear view mirror, your side mirrors; and looking when appropriate through the side or rear windows. Just because you are looking for potential dangers doesn't mean you want to steer into them (e.g. a car overtaking you). Applying makeup etc. or tuning the radio would be unusually lethal.

This is a terrible idea because it unnecessarily links control of the car together with attention. Even covert attention (moving your attention around without moving your eyes) is coupled to the eye movement system in the brain (covertly shifting attention to a different part of the visual field really involves planning eye movements towards that spot). You need to have control of your vehicle uncoupled from this process, since driving requires you to pay attention to many things at once. There's no re

One of the first things you learn in any driver's education class is to constantly scan the road ahead of you and pay attention to your surroundings while driving, which involves a lot of eye movement (generally in the direction of forward, but eye movement nonetheless). What happens to this system when your eyes are looking a few cars ahead? What happens to the system when you're trying to make a lane change? What happens when reversing?

I suspect this was in jest, but I knew a quadriplegic (depending on the vertebra where the cord is damaged, you may get some use of hands. In his case, he had gross muscle control of his left hand, but fine muscle control was nonexistent) once, who had to use an incredibly complex hand control to operate a vehicle.

This sounds like it would be a huge win in simplicating the life for someone like him. You reduce the number of controls he needs from "left, right, acel, brake" to "acel, break, go where I'm l

If you think eye tracking makes the road safer than you know how you can save lives on highways? Never ever drive a car again since you evidently are a disaster waiting to happen.

See, anyone who knows how to drive spends a lot of time not looking directly in front of them. You usually know what's in front of you. The danger comes from the sides or from behind. If you want to avoid it you better keep an eye out for it.

Advanced driving courses always teach scanning techniques for driving that include looking not only where you are going, but constantly scanning for pedestrians on either side of the road, cars that may or may not see you about to turn in front of you, cars in your left and right side mirrors, and cars in your rear view mirror. They also teach to always have an escape route: if the unexpected happens, always have a place you can steer to to avoid a hazard without crashing into another car or a pedestrian. You can't do these things if you always have to look only where you want the car to go. Peripheral vision is not acute enough to pick up, for example, the shadow of a person's feet beneath a huge SUV parked on the side of a road, where that person may suddenly step out in front of you without looking since the SUV is blocking both your and their line of sight. Unless entirely autonomous, the vehicle's control surfaces HAVE to be independent of eye movement, because situational awareness depends on it (even in some cases the ability to turn your head to check a blind spot, or to see if your kid in the back seat isn't choking on his or her toys).

People do this already. To learn to drive a car, ride a bike, ski, or control any other type of vehicle, you go through a learning process where you commit the control procedures to muscle memory. Once you have that covered, you pretty much go where you want to go, without necessarily thinking 'ok, now I need to turn the steering wheel'.

By and large, barring any significant equipment failure, you pretty much go towards whatever has your attention - for better or worse. Target fixation is alive and well in p

With most people that drive while texting or looking cellphone, the car should see that idiot is not looking at road and pull over to the side of the road safely so that the idiot knows that person is no looking at the road.

Especially given how many people find it necessary to constantly make eye contact with their passengers when talking. Ah, well. At least it would cull the herd. It's too bad it'll take out so many innocents in the process though; surely there's a more efficient way.

Alright, that aside... it looks like it won't be that sensitive after RTFA:

"The car stops at intersections and asks the driver for guidance on which road to take," the researchers say. A few seconds of attention with the driver looking in his desired direction get the car flowing again.

Why would anyone take the time to design a device like this without having any understanding of what a normal driver does with their eyes in the course of operating a motor vehicle? Could the designer possibly be such a bad driver that they only look ahead where they are going? Why would anyone fund a design program run by someone that doesn't even know how to drive? That would be like hiring Sarah Palin to be president.

I've never understood this desire for eye controlled devices. With the exception of targeting a personal firearm, my eyes bounce around to so many objects so fast that I can barely type a sentence without getting completely distracted. If the cursor was controlled by my eyes while I was typing this paragraph would be nothing but a jumble of text, and half the letters would be strewn about my office.

An eye controlled firearm might make more sense. It sights where you look. And it could fire every time you blink. Now we are talking. If you blinked every time a weapon fired it would be fully automatic fire. It would make a great hunting weapon.

There's a lot of problems, but no one has mentioned drunk drivers yet. The problem with drunk drivers is that they'll fixate on something in front of them and follow it. That's why you have to pay attention at night if you are parked on the side of the road with your lights on. Drunk drivers will hone in on your lights and hit you. Seems like this eye-drive would only make that easier. Then again I guess a drunk driver is pretty deadly even without this.(Bonus points if you can tell me whether I'll get

'The Spirit of Berlin' is also an autonomous car equipped with GPS navigation, scores of cameras, lasers and scanners that enable it to drive by itself. And should the technology-packed vehicle have a major bug, there's still an old fashioned way of stopping it. Two big external emergency buttons at the rear of the car allow people outside to shut down all systems.

Else the Spirit of Berlin might start looking like the Spirit of Dresden fairly quickly... but if the thing ends up out of control, what the hell

Anyone ride a motorcycle? They always teach you to "look through your turns" because the bike tends to go where your head is aimed. Regularly accidents happen in which a bike swerves into another vehicle because the rider panics and looks where they don't want to go instead of where they do. Now we can bring this great feature to cars?

... if you are riding down the road and see an object (such as a pothole or large stone or piece of exhaust pipe) that you wish to avoid, THE LAST THING YOU DO IS LOOK AT IT, because you do ride where you look.

This is a lesson that bikers learn the hard way, you fall off and get hurt.

Car drivers are different, so you will have car drivers who notice obstacles in the road as being more visually interesting than the blacktop itself, and promptly drive though / over / into all of them.

"Rubbernecking" also means that every single accident suddenly becomes a gravitational black hole, and the possibility of any vehicle passing it without adding to it approaches zero.

The steering wheel works perfectly well, just ask Michael Schumacher, if you are going to mess with that then go directly to fully automated, cut the human right out of the control system.

A driver benefits just as much from the tactile feedback they receive from the steering wheel as they do from looking where they are going. Why in the world would anyone want to steer a car and not be able to feel the road?

Evidently LOTS of people like to be removed from the driving equation given how many American cars are engineered to NOT give drivers any feedback (SUVs, large sedans like the Crown Victoria and its ilk, random crappy car with the sponge suspension and numb steering, etc.).

Indeed. I think most people would be happier if they could have self-driving cars. Americans neither want to wait for a bus/train, nor drive their own vehicle safely. Self driving cars are the only solution I can recommend.